In a Presidential Election About the Economy, Paul Ryan Was the Only Choice

John Tamny
, ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

After weeks and months of rumors and speculation about whom Mitt Romney would pick as his Vice Presidential running mate, the suspense ended this morning with the announcement that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan would fill the role. Media accounts will suggest that the Ryan pick had a bold, go-for-broke quality to it, but in truth Ryan was the safest selection of all.

He was the safest because in an election all about the U.S. economy, Ryan is the most suited among the names floated to make a strong case for removing the barriers to economic growth erected by Republican (George W. Bush) and Democratic (Barack Obama) administrations over the last 12 years. Romney himself, though a smashing success as a businessman, has struggled to make a coherent economic argument; his 59 point economic plan all the evidence one needs that the GOP presidential nominee could use some help tightening up what should be a very simple economic message.

Paul Ryan could make the above arguments in his sleep, and for being able to, he was the only – and once again the safest – choice for Romney. This column for quite some time has said President Obama’s time in the White House will amount to four years, and the pick of Ryan makes that even more certain.

Not too surprisingly, the major media are describing the Ryan pick as evidence of the GOP’s “desire to place the nation’s looming fiscal challenges at the center of the campaign’s final months.” The Washington Post made the latter assertion, but it’s doubtful that the Romney/Ryan message will be the proverbial “root canal” whereby the challengers spend the next three months talking about unfunded liabilities. If so, the Obama camp should celebrate because while government spending (not deficits, those can be financed) is a brutal economic burden for the federal government extracting limited growth capital from the private sector in order to fund capital-destroying waste, that’s not the message needed today. If it were, Romney would have picked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Instead, the Ryan choice points to a campaign that wants to make a lack of economic growth the election story, and Ryan once again is the best choice to help Romney articulate a growth message. On taxes, long before Romney crafted a national tax reform plan, Ryan was working with other growth oriented members of the House on ways to simplify the tax code.

Taxes matter, but then monetary policy matters most at the moment. Here Ryan is better than most in Washington in that he’s regularly cast a skeptical eye on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s numerous, and highly simplistic attempts to boost growth; attempts that can be broken down to the absurd slogan “Weak Economy, Just Add Dollars.” . Though not a monetary expert, it’s certainly true that Ryan learned much at the knee of his hero, the late Jack Kemp. More than any modern politician, Kemp understood the supreme importance of strengthening and stabilizing the dollar through re-attachment of the latter to gold, and it’s possible Ryan will carry Kemp’s message into the West Wing. Kemp was for fixed exchange rates more broadly as a way to boost wealth enhancing global trade, so hopefully there Ryan can walk Romney back from his economically illiterate and potentially disastrous China-bashing.

And while Chief Justice John Roberts doubtless has the Founding Fathers spinning for handing the decision about the future of U.S. healthcare to an impassioned electorate (as Forbes contributor Bill Flax recently observed, the Founders were every bit as skeptical of unrestrained democracy as they were monarchy), Ryan is arguably unparalleled in his ability to deconstruct the monstrosity that is Obamacare. So good is he there, it may be worthwhile to watch his upcoming debate with Vice President Joe Biden for what promises to be a great takedown.

It should be stressed that Ryan has weaknesses. Though thought to be a major budget hawk such that the media have once again analyzed his selection as evidence that the Romney/Ryan campaign will be about fixing the deficit, the irony is that the allegedly austere Ryan proposed a budget last year that would consume $40 trillion over the next ten years versus the $46 trillion non-starter proposed by President Obama. Soft bigotry of low expectations?

Considering the bailouts of banks and car companies that caused a financial crisis all the while robbing the U.S. of a major economic rebound, Ryan supported them. Looking at government spending on a more narrow level, Ryan seems to have no interest in reducing the U.S. military’s role as the world’s policeman as a way to shrink the economic burden that is government, and while he might decry crony capitalism with the best of them, not too long ago he wrote a letter to an Obama cabinet member seeking government funds for a “green” business in his district.

About the above, the logical answer is that Ryan is a politician, and more than any professional class, politicians aren’t perfect. Ryan certainly isn’t perfect, but for an election about a sagging economy, no one is better suited than Ryan when it comes to simplifying what is really quite simple: economic growth. Ryan knows intimately that economic growth is an incredibly basic function of removing the tax, trade, regulatory and monetary barriers to production. Because he does, he was the only choice for Mitt Romney, and his selection greatly boosts Romney’s odds versus President Obama on November 6th.